Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Let’s face it, if you are paying to see Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping you know going in exactly what you are getting. Written by The Lonely Island TrioAndy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, the celebrity mockumentary is variations of one joke stretched to 86 minutes. Lampooning celebrity by highlighting former boy band singer Connor4Real (Samberg) turned solo star adjusting to the unexpected criticism of his new album, it takes shots at everything from vapid celebrities to the media obsessed with them.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping isn’t a great movie. Like it’s lead character, it lacks the brains or ambition to make the most out of its talent. That said, even over-stuffed with real-life celebrities playing themselves and jibes at TMZ, the movie does produce several humorous moments. Not all the jokes land but enough do to to keep the train rolling. An 86-minute running time might seem rather short, but for a script with so little to say it’s actually a tad long.

The film’s creators bring their music parody skills to bear here. However all of Connor’s songs, both the hits and horrific misfires, all sound pretty much the same (bad and ridiculous). That’s a problem when the entire plot hinges on some being vastly better than others.

Nothing more than a walking punchline, Connor is a problematic lead character. The movie invites you to continue to revel in both his stupidity and misfortune but when it also asks you to root for his success it offers very little reason to back-up its case. If you are looking for a truly funny biopic parody I’d recommend finding a copy of 2007’s underrated gem Walk Hard. If you’re just looking to kill 90 minutes Popstar will deliver exactly what it promises: several cheap jokes and a enough laughs to keep your interest for most of its short running time. In what is shaping up to be a rather lackluster start to the summer movie season you could certainly do worse, but that’s about as much praise as I can muster for this one-joke wonder.